poison & ivy
by milk ghost
Summary: He comes to her in the night, but he can't ever get past the doorpost. — butch/buttercup
1. i

**notes:** i like that southern gothic juice. let me drink it up & pour me another. i thrive. a toast, y'all.

 **notes2:** this is an anthology in time for halloween, i guess.

 **disclaimer:** don't.

i.

 _my spirit, bondaged by the body, longs—_

…

The Trees speak Latin.

And Celtic, and Olde English, and Bastard. _Especially_ Bastard.

In fact, the Trees never fucking shut up.

They take unexplainable joy in his misery and misfortune, and they never let him alone. One day, he'll burn this whole damn forest to the ground. He rolls the devilish idea around on his tongue. The taste of arson and petty revenge is delicious. It is perfectly suited for someone of his hellish and insatiable palette.

Idly, he leans against the doorframe of the forgotten and ages cottage and wonders what obscure plant she has ground up and sprinkled in her threshold to keep him out. He catches the scent of something warm and sweet wafting through the open doorway, and it makes his mouth water. She always tempts him like this: door left wide open for just about any-fucking-one except him, renowned baked goods just out of the oven, and cozy cottage inviting.

The joke is on him, though, because any human rarely visits her here. And he can't get into the cottage to take a bite of her pies or her. It's cruel, and she knows it. This is why the Trees make him a laughing stock. Because his hunger is insatiable. Because what he wants the most is what he cannot have or touch.

"The Trees are making fun of you, again."

There she is, he grins. It's a feral, hungry thing. He's been waiting for this moment. Something inside him heaves at the sight of her, in all her unabashed glory.

Her eyes are the brightest shade of green he's ever seen in this forest, in this life. Her dark hair is shorter than it had been the last time he had laid eyes on her. Now it barely dusts her exposed shoulders. She is holding a freshly baked peach pie.

" _Goddamn_ ," he murmurs, annunciates.

The black cat in the windowsill narrows its eyes at him and hisses.

"I could rip your heart out of your chest," he sighs dreamily.

Buttercup gently sets the pie on the table next to a chaotic mess of indistinguishable herbs, plants, and roots. "If you cross that line, I will fucking kill you."

He knows she will. It's a promise. Or she would try her best, anyway. He doesn't doubt that she would leave a mark. It almost makes him feel as if his heart is beating again. Or that he had a heart to begin with.

The Trees haven't stopped laughing. He lays exquisite plans to slit their exposed roots so that their precious Sap bleeds out of them and onto the hungry ground.

She knows that he cannot cross into her home anyways. Not without an invitation. Not without her removing the damned circle of mistletoe or vervain or whatever witchy concoction she had cooked up and spread around. Her Magic is far too strong. So for now he will bide his time and overage from her doorway until she lets her guard slip. Then he will enter to feast on her heart and her pie.

"Witch," he calls to her.

" _Abomination_ ," Buttercup replies, flipping through her grimoire, not even a bit hesitant.

He sucks in a sharp breath, wondering and furious that such a single word like that from her fills him with feeling.

…

 _tbc_

 _..._

 **and end:** what is butch? we just don't Know. anyways i'm tryiNG. i have been out of the game far too long.


	2. ii

**notes:** autumn is such a time for power moves, honestly.

ii.

 _and i may never hope for full release_ —

…

She is one from a set of three.

Their mother had died after her youngest sister had been born—but there were rumors. She had been _something_. The wife of the village doctor had spoken to the Trees, and the animals, and had made strange remedies for the various ailments of the people.

People thought she had been an odd girl. She had read book after book of whatever she could get her hands on. She didn't fear the night in the forest. She had kept a raccoon as a companion alongside her husband. She had not fit in with the ideal image of a quiet and tender housewife because there had been something wild and wonderful rooted inside of her.

She had been appointed an honor that most mortals knew nothing of. Her mother had been an emissary to the Wood.

Perhaps her father had known before, during the time when the both of them had been young and carefree and he had become enamoured with the ferocious tenderness and spirit inside the girl who talked to Trees and slept with the wolves. Perhaps he had known that a woman so wonderful would not belong in such a world as this that stifled her for long.

But he had loved her, though the villagers never failed to whisper and wonder. They thought she was a bit out of her head, and that maybe the Doctor was, as well. The people never cast them out, though, for that was the comfortable strangeness of the village. There were more peculiar and horrifying things afoot than a pretty girl who talked to plants.

Buttercup supposes that out of the three of them, she inherited her mother's wildness. Blossom and Bubbles had nearly rejected the idea of becoming emissaries altogether. But Buttercup had never been interested in studying and being a proper lady, like Blossom. And she had never much cared for boys and society like Bubbles. She much preferred the tonic of the wilderness and the Wood. Or perhaps a good brawl with her friends every once in a while.

Maybe that was how she ended up as the reigning emissary of the Wood. Or maybe she was always meant to be the one to attend to the Magic of the partially dying world and try to keep it alive.

If that were true, then Fate had a terrible sense of humor and she would hate to see the rest of her Tarot hand.

"Do you remember how we met?"

He is here, again, invading her life and her safe space, dammit. Next time she should just make up an entire wheelbarrow of the strongest and worst repellent concoction she can think of and spread it around a 50-yard radius of her cottage.

It would be for the best.

Then again, he would probably whine and complain even more and even louder.

Buttercup aggressively butchers the slab of beef on her kitchen counter. "What the hell does it matter?"

He stretches lazily, reclined in a low Tree branch outside the window. "Well, Peaches, I happen to think it's an important step in our relationship. First impressions are vital, after all."

"You tried to rip my heart out of my chest and devour it," she deadpans, voice all monotone and seemingly nonchalant. "Especially after you found out who I am."

He lets out a low whistle. "Damn, and here I thought you had forgotten. It has been one year since that day. Happy anniversary! Do I get a kiss?"

Just one taste of her, the monster inside him longs so much that the hunger physically pains him. He knows that one taste would never, ever be enough. Even if he were to gorge himself on her heart, it would never be enough.

That was his curse.

He was insatiable, after all.

"The fuck you will," she snorts indignantly, discarding of the useless bits of meat.

Her familiar eyes him from the top of a cupboard. He flips it the bird. "If not a kiss, then can I at least have a slice of that meat pie? I _know_ you're making meat pie. I have memorized the smell. It smells like meat pie."

Buttercup roughly throws down the dough for crust in a manner that makes the entire cottage shudder. She gives him a slightly dirty and pissed off look. "Ain't you got shit to do? Like, I don't know, terrorize some local villagers and murder a family of rabbits?"

He makes face, a bit insulted. "Hey now. That's a tad barbarian, don't you think? I'm more civilized than that. Plus, rabbits ain't good raw. Now, with dumplings…."

The shoulder of her blouse slips a bit farther than it should be, and he pretends not to notice. Everything about her, though, is a little ethereal. It's like she doesn't belong in this world at all. She carries with her a presence that is otherworldly. Perhaps that's a perk of being an emissary. She is beauty and intelligence, ferocity and tenderness, wilderness and home all at once. She holds the balance.

He's so starving.

"Fuck off. It ain't even meat pie," Buttercup responds, rolling out the dough for the meat pie that he knows she is making, even though she is blatantly lying to his face.

He whines.

She throws some ground mountain ash at him and it burns like fuck, but he sticks around anyways to call her a Liar. The Tree he is settled into is very annoyed with him, and decides to voice its opinion of the filthy scoundrel in its branches to her. This makes her somewhat more irate, and she throws her rolling pin at him.

But she does not call him an abomination.

And that is something.

...

 _tbc_

 **notes2:** i need to lie down for 20 hours, approximately.


	3. iii

**notes:** "wow she actually updated something instead of starting a hundred new stories?!"

iii.

 _something in me is lost, forever lost—_

...

He doesn't even know the name of the woman who haunts his dreams.

So he calls her by _witch peaches sweetheart_ _darling dear dearest_. He hears whispers from the horrors of the Deadwood, the darkest parts of the forest, about her. It amuses him, truly, that lowlifes like that would even speak of her. They wouldn't even be able to handle her. She would desecrate them without a moment's notice.

Sometimes, at night, he will see her. She's standing there, looking dangerous and divine and delicious. He's always so hungry—for anything to fill his void, for chaos, for carnage, for _her_. She drives him beyond the brink of sanity, though he thinks he never had much of that to begin with.

In his dreams her fingers lightly travel down his chest, lips just out of reach of his. He wants to devour her. She will drag her fingers through his hair and tangle their legs. She will be his undoing. He would give _anythinganythinganything_ to have her. Her lips ghost over his, and he—

He wakes up, wondering when the hell he ever dozed off in the first place, and feeling so very, deafeningly alone. The memory of her lingers and he can't handle it. He always wakes up before the good parts. No other woman—nor succubus or those of his kind—ever make him feel this. He has never wanted anything more.

On nights like this, he will make the trip to her cottage. Of course she is safely asleep inside, and he cannot ever get in, but something keeps him there. It's as if there is some invisible force that ties him to her—the witch of the Wood whose name he does not even know. So, he makes himself as comfortable as he can a fair distance away, but close enough to make himself feel better.

There are things in the Wood that could devour her other than him, too, and he will not have that.

He leans his head back and stares up at the countless stars spread across the night sky. Sometimes, he likes to try and think of names that might suit her. Maybe one of them actually belongs to her. Though, he can't ever seen to come up with a name that encompasses all that she is.

Veronica, Celeste, Mary, Elizabeth, Lydia—none of them ever seen right.

In the early morning, he wakes up to her familiar's cold glare. It's just a fucking cat, but the thing always comes off as so angry and eerie. He narrows his eyes back, and wonders when the hell he fell asleep again.

"I long for the day when you'll quit loitering around my home."

He grins, significantly more awake than he had been. Because she is there, still half asleep, leaning out her window. Her hair is messy, eyes glassy and far away, and her nightdress is slipping off her shoulder. His heart throbs.

Her voice is far quieter and has a softer tone when she speaks. He supposes that it's because she will fall back asleep very soon, and she is not that awake right now. There is a look on her face that he has never seen before.

"What's your name, witch?" he calls to her, more gently than he's ever spoken to her before.

She looks at him for a long, long time. Perhaps she is more awake than he realizes. "Buttercup," she finally replies. "My name is Buttercup."

He would have never thought of that, but it's somehow fitting for her.

Buttercup purses her lips and sucks in a breath. "What is yours?"

Ah. That was the question.

He shrugs. "Don't remember it. I haven't heard it in a fucking while."

She stares at him, almost through him, and he squirms a little. Something about her looking at him like that makes him uncomfortable. If she desired, she could probably become one of the best priestesses around—because her stare makes him feel like penance is at hand.

"If you're not going to leave me alone, and I'm stuck with you for the foreseeable future, then I should call you by something."

He's about to point out that she usually calls him by some form of _abomination_ or _bastard_ , but she speaks again.

"I'll call you Butch."

With that, she slips back into her window, presumably to go back to sleep.

He doesn't.

...

tbc

...


End file.
